How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don’t even know a cup of concentrated chicken soup when it’s right in front of your nose?
What’s the matter with you, buddy? Where are your brains? If you’ve had a freakish education, at least use it, use it. You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don’t realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don’t see how you’ll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness.
Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer’s a goddamn spy.
Though we’ve talked and talked and talked, we’ve all agreed not to say a word.
This sentence I’m reading is terrific.” I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood. He didn’t get It, though.
You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live.
Mother, darling, don’t yell at me. I can hear you beautifully,” said the girl.
They sang without instrumental accompaniment – or, more accurately in their case, without any interference. Their voices were melodious and unsentimental, almost to the point where a somewhat more denominational man than myself might, without straining, have experienced levitation. A couple of the very youngest children dragged the tempo a trifle, but in a way that only the composer’s mother could have found fault with.
Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy.
He calls me Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948.
Soon the Laughing Man has amassed the largest personal fortune in the world. Most of it he contributed anonymously to the monks of a local monastery- humble ascetics who had dedicated their lives to raising German police dogs.
He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs.
My big trouble is, I always sort of think whoever I’m necking is a pretty intelligent person. It hasn’t got a goddam thing to do with it, but I keep thinking it anyway.
I spent a little more than five months in Vienna. I danced. I went ice skating and skiing. For strenuous exercise, I argued with an Englishman.
Just get sick sometime and go visit yourself, and you’ll find out how tactless you are!
The thing is, if you get very depressed about something, it’s hard as hell to swallow.
I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and buying it, and nobody in the store knowing she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought she was a regular girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell- I don’t know why exactly.
As much as anything else, it was a stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn’t quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that.
I think I’d first just assemble all the children together and show them how to meditate. I’d try to show them how to find out who they are, not just what their names are and things like that... I guess, even before that, I’d get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told them.
I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth.